Reinventing The Wheel: Teaching Restoration Ecology Without the Ecology

Abstract

Restoration ecology is "the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed." Restoration can range from returning the system to its "natural" state through to restoring some ecological functionality to a system. The University of Western Australia offers an undergraduate degree in Restoration Ecology. As part of the degree first year undergraduate students must complete the unit "Introduction to Restoration Ecology." This unit aims to introduce students to the general concepts of ecological restoration. As part of the assessment for "Introduction to Restoration Ecology" students were required to develop a restoration plan using the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI) guidelines and then implement the plan. The SERI guidelines for developing and managing ecological restoration projects cover areas from conceptual planning through to evaluation and publicity. Planning and implementation of an ecological restoration may take many months or years, and may be well above the abilities of a number of first year undergraduates, therefore old bicycles were used as a teaching tool to develop the students understanding of the steps required to plan and implement a restoration project. Students were given the goal of restoring a bicycle that then had to safely negotiate a distance of approximately 500m on a tarmac surface over a set course. The emphasis was not restoring the bicycle to a pristine state, but rather planning and restoring the functionality of the bicycle. (Contains 2 figures.)